A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST INDIES

To see the translation of the printing above please look below and there are two translations. Bartolomeo De La Casas [1484-1566] was a catholic priest who decided to document the atrocities and violent actions towards the native-american populations during the Spanish conquest. In the indies or near Cuba, the indigenous people were treated very poorly from the new arrivals to the new world. There was a controversy to these stories. The handout from class will help you in your ability to understand what happened. The class handout is the primary source. The videos will help explain the account by De Las Casas. Today's video is another perspective you should have notes from class for a broader perspective. Please use all of these research sources below to work on your Wayback Wednesday. This is the last Wayback for this first notebook. Best wishes.Accessed September 5, 2017. http://www.gilderlehrman.org/multimedia#!GLC04220.

Who We Are

“American’s aren’t wrong in seeing the West as a land of the future, a land in which astonishing things are possible. What they are often wrong about is that there’s no price to be paid for that, that everybody can succeed, or that even what succeeds is necessarily the best for all concerned. The West is much more complicated than that.”

–Richard White

About Us

Grade Eight – United States History and Geography: Growth and Conflict

What did freedom mean to the nation’s founders and how did it change over time?

How and why did the United States expand?

Who is considered an American?

GOD IN AMERICA TRANSCRIPT

Check your notes:[The words spoken by the actors in this film are from transcripts, sermons and personal journals of the characters they portray.]ANNOUNCER: Beginning tonight, a special series exploring how religious faith and the quest for religious liberty has shaped public life in America for over 400 years.- You can't divorce faith from the American experience. It really is our historical and cultural DNA.ANNOUNCER: This is the dramatic history of the struggle for faith and freedom, rewritten by war, by politics and by spiritual imagination.- We've had this notion, from the very beginning of American life, that this is a special place and what makes it special is that we have some kind of special relationship with God.ANNOUNCER: It is the story of how Europeans' attempts to convert native Americans was met with violent rebellion, how the Puritans fled religious tyranny in the Old World to build a more perfect society in the new.JOHN WINTHROP: We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.ANNOUNCER: And how new waves of immigrants demanded their religious freedom.- Hughes genuinely felt that the public schools were engines of converting Catholics into Protestants.ANNOUNCER: It is the story of faith, the Civil War, and a president's private spiritual journey.- Lincoln decided that the war had been decreed by God.ANNOUNCER: And the religious foundation of Civil Rights.Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.: I just want to do God's will, and he has allowed me to go up to the mountain!ANNOUNCER: It is a story of spiritual awakenings and political awakenings.Pres. RONALD REAGAN: I know that you can't endorse me, but I endorse you.ANNOUNCER: Of the freedom to believe and the struggle to be free from belief, of the quest for truth, faith and power in the most religiously diverse nation on earth.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.ANNOUNCER: It is a complex history full of surprises and insights, a fresh and challenging journey through the American story.Tonight, Part One of God in America.THE NEW ADAMNARRATOR: When the first Europeans came to the New World, they brought with them Christian traditions and beliefs that had endured for more than a thousand years. But in this new land, religion would be forced to change.STEPHEN PROTHERO, Professor of Religion, Boston University: It's this new place, the New World, the new Jerusalem, the new Israel, whatever you might call it, but "new'' is the operative word. And that's being made here. And what's being made is precisely up for grabs.NARRATOR: This is the story of America's struggle from old religion to new.STEPHEN PROTHERO: There was this idea that we are the new Adam and the new Eve. We are these new people, and we're being made by this new environment. And that's what we're sort of straining toward early on, some new kind of narrative, some new kind of story that we, as Americans, can tell that is going to be a story of us in relationship to God.NARRATOR: A story that would change American religion forever and help give birth to Americans' identity.A century after Christopher Columbus came to the New World, the first Spaniards reached the land that they would call New Mexico. Their conquistadors came in search of silver, their missionaries came to save heathen souls.Father JACK ROBINSON, Franciscan Friar: It was important. This was life and death. Not simply life and death here on earth, this was eternal life and eternal damnation.NARRATOR: For they believed theirs was the true path to salvation.Father JACK CLARK ROBINSON: "I'm supposed to go to places where they haven't heard this story before and share this story, share this Gospel message, because I believe it's true.''NARRATOR: But the people the Spanish encountered had their own religious traditions. For more than a thousand years, the Pueblo Indians had led a spiritual life that had flourished among the hills and valleys of the Rio Grande.PORTER SWENTZELL, Santa Clara Pueblo: Our whole world around us is our religion. Our way of life is our religion. The way we behave towards one another and towards others- that's our religion, you know? The very moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we that go to bed, and even when we're asleep, you know, that's our religion.NARRATOR: The Spanish began to settle on Pueblo lands.PORTER SWENTZELL: We welcome people coming to visit, give them food. We provide them a place to stay. That's the kind of hospitality that they met the Spanish that were coming in with. They were looking for that the Spanish would see what kind of people they are and respond in kind. They never did reciprocate that kind of relationship.NARRATOR: Within a decade, the Spanish had built more than 40 Catholic churches. The Franciscan friars conducted daily Mass, and the Pueblos came.

PORTER SWENTZELL: The Pueblos were not closed saying, "Our way is the only right way.'' When the Church came in, the Peublos said, "Hey, we'll go to your Mass and listen to what you have to say.'' And so the Spanish thought that was a willing acceptance of Catholicism.NARRATOR: But the Pueblos had no intention of letting Christianity take the place of their own religion.Father JACK CLARK ROBINSON: The Pueblos could say, "We'll add the blessed mother. We'll add the baby Jesus.'' There was obviously some confusion because the friars didn't realize that they were being- that they were an addition rather than a replacement.NARRATOR: But the Franciscan priests saw no room for any other religion. Eternal damnation, theirs and the Pueblos, was at stake. Catholicism was the only religion that could save the native souls. By the early 1600s, they began to report that hundreds of Pueblo Indians were converting, but the Pueblos themselves saw things differently.JOSEPH H. SUINA, Historian, University of New Mexico: The Catholic Church was saying one true God, and no others. Well, it's not that way with Pueblo religion. You know, it's- we don't think that there's one true God for all people in the world.JOE A. GARCIA, Okhay Owingeh Pueblo: Converting means you let go of your way and you take on another way. And I don't believe that happened ever.NARRATOR: Some friars began to notice that even many converted Pueblos continued to practice their own religion. They demanded that the colony's soldiers enforce their one true faith. Native ceremonies were banned, religious icons burned, sacred places of worship destroyed.JOSEPH H. SUINA: As far as you could go in terms of saying, "Look, forget it. This is not going to ever be again. This is what we think about your religion.''Father JACK CLARK ROBINSON: It was a time of militancy about your faith, and the friars brought that with them. "We have the truth. This is the truth. This is the truth that the whole Spanish empire is behind me supporting. I'm going to get this truth in there.''NARRATOR: Some priests became notoriously brutal. One beat a Pueblo man so badly, the victim was described as bathed in blood. The breaking point came in 1675. Forty-seven Pueblo religious leaders were imprisoned in Santa Fe for sorcery. One of them was a man called Po'pay from the Okay Owingeh pueblo. He was publically flogged, but three others were dragged before their people and hanged.JOSEPH H. SUINA: It got to that point when about the time he was in prison, when things were really getting worse, you know, and so for him, this was- this was time to do something.NARRATOR: Po'pay sent a message to the Pueblo tribes calling for war.PO'PAY: I say to you, my brothers, go to your owingehs. Wait further word. Senge de ho.NARRATOR: Two thousand Pueblo Indians descended on the Spanish. Hundreds died in the fighting, but it was the Catholic priests who were specifically targeted. More than half their number were murdered. It was August 10th, 1680. Ten days later, the Spanish fled New Mexico.The Catholic empire had faltered. It was a sign that European religion would not survive unchanged in the New World.